[Bookclub, chap. 3] Author's Treatment of the Aggregates

Dakini

AS puts emotions in the consciousness aggregate (p.43) of the 5 aggregates. I'm used to seeing emotions in the sankhara aggregate. I also found his description of the sankhara aggregate "unorthodox". Did anyone else notice this? --BuckyG

Ric

Eesh im afraid I cant answer this question. Stuff like this is too technical and I would have no idea what the orthodox tradition is.

Jeffrey

I don't think we know what we mean by emotions. Sanskrit does not have a word such as emotions which refers to positive and negative things.

BuckyG

I don't think we know what we mean by emotions.

I think you're right. This is true for Pali too. :buck:

Dakini

Confession: I've never read about the aggregates until this book. I'm finding it very interesting. But I'm not able to compare and contrast with other threatments of the subject.

@Jeffrey What do you mean, we don't know what we mean by emotions?

Jeffrey

Dakini, we know them as an experience but it is not a precise term. It is like love or mind kinda nebulous. I guess people were trying to categorize emotions as a skanda, and I think that doesn't work as well as we would hope.

For example with an emotion I think all the five skandas are active. We feel something in the body. There is a feeling if we like the emotion. There are perceptions and of perceptions there is fabrication. And through all of this there is consciousness.

In meditation we are mindful of all of these in shamata vipassana meditation. In breath meditation we still have mindfulness of all of these because its not true that attention is whole on the breath.

BuckyG

Well put Jeffrey. Thanks.
BG